Make Believe and Pretend
by Elma MacBetsy
Summary: This was written before series four was made. It's an AU of what could have happened to Rose in the parallel universe, and how she and the Doctor could have been reunited.


This was written almost two years ago, so obviously before any of series 4.

**Make-Believe and Pretend**

She still misses him. That much was inevitable. The way he smiled, his laugh, his hair, the way he never gave up…The list went on. But time continued to pass. Everything changed, yet remained the same. The Earth rotated on its axis in exactly one day. It revolved around the sun in a year. These were constants, unchangeable similarities between this world and the next. The things that tie the now and the then together, bonds stronger than all of time and space. These are the things that keep her grounded. They let her keep some semblance of the girl she used to be, all those years ago. She needs that to cling to as she watches the people she loves pass, their life's essence gone, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. _Everything has its time, everything dies_.

Amongst all of this, new life is forms: A crying child, new to this world, unaware of the cruelties life will force upon it. It won't last. Give it ten years, give it twenty. The child will grow up, live its life and see the world for what it really is. She wishes she could be that young again, to go back to a time when 'forever' wasn't a concept she could understand and having her whole life ahead of her meant something. When she still had _him_ ahead of her, all of time and space at her fingertips. But not anymore. Her world is empty now, devoid of anyone besides herself. There are over eight million people on the planet now, yet she's never been so alone. Friendship is something she gave up on years ago. She finally understands why _he _kept all the world at a distance.

Against all of this she still retains a glimmer of hope. Someday, somehow, he'll find her, she'll find him. Someday. Just not today. How long as it been now anyway? Long enough for him to remember? Long enough for him to forget…? Has he moved on? Has he regenerated? Is he even still alive? So many questions that only _he_ can answer.

She's definitely much different now than how she was when he still knew her. She's had to learn so many different skills over the years for so many different jobs. She can never stay in the same place for long. People talk enough as it is. But this works to her advantage. It's an excuse to travel the world, if not the depths of space. Right now she's a midwife. It makes her heart ache every time she delivers another bundle of joy into the world. _Congratulations, it's a boy, it's a girl. _She almost had that chance. She could have told him, _should_ have told him. But how do you tell your only love that he's going to be a daddy when you _know_ he'll never meet his child? So she never said a word.

Then she started working for Torchwood. If there was one thing she could now say about Torchwood, it was that it was the cause of nearly all the pain in her life. It stole her away from her love and then severed her last connection. She was shot on a field mission. It was a fatal wound. She was invincible. Her child wasn't. She was the only one to know it existed; she was the only one to mourn.

When she really thought about it, she knew her life was a mess. But _he_ thought she was happy, and that was all that really mattered. And so for his sake, she likes to pretend that she moved on years ago, that he isn't her first thought when she wakes up every morning and he's not her last thought before she goes to sleep every night. She doesn't still wake up screaming as she relives that fateful day at Canary Wharf again and again. Her whole life is a game of make-believe now, she knows it. That's the only way she knows how to live anymore.

That's why when she hears the familiar whooshing of a familiar engine she tells herself it's just a car. That's why when there's a hesitant knock at her door and she _swears_ she can feel who it is, she tells herself it's only the postman. When she opens the door and is greeted with thick brown hair sticking up everywhere, a pinstripe suit covering a slender frame and a winning smile plastered across the familiar face, she wonders if she's finally gone insane. He scoops her up in a bone crushing hug and greets her, probably with some bad pun or joke, extremely inappropriate given the circumstances. He holds out his hand and she doesn't hesitate in taking it, willing to follow him anywhere. He leads her back to the TARDIS and to the first day of her new old life.

That's how she lives out the rest of eternity, at her love's side, saving worlds and stopping destruction. The Oncoming Storm and the Bad Wolf, a force to be reckoned with. Yet there's always that nagging thought in the back of her head. _Is this real?_ How can something so perfect be happening? She never voices these worries, frightened that it'd break the illusion, if that's what this is. _But_ _does it matter?_ She's happier now that she has been in years. If it's not reality, then she's already decided to stay in the pretend world her mind had created. After all, what is there to stay for in the real world?


End file.
